The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Sun, 04 Jul 2021 16:07:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 The Investment Stewardship Ecosystem https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/07/24/the-investment-stewardship-ecosystem/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/07/24/the-investment-stewardship-ecosystem/#respond Tue, 24 Jul 2018 13:29:24 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=109400?d=20180724093003EDT Posted by Barbara Novick, Michelle Edkins, and Tom Clark, BlackRock, Inc., on Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Editor's Note: Barbara Novick is Vice Chairman, Michelle Edkins is Global Head of Investment Stewardship, and Tom Clark is Head of Global Public Policy, Americas, at BlackRock, Inc. This post is based on a BlackRock memorandum by Ms. Novick, Ms. Edkins, Mr. Clark, and Alexis Rosenblum.

Your company’s strategy must articulate a path to achieve financial performance. To sustain that performance, however, you must also understand the societal impact of your business as well as the ways that broad, structural trends –from slow wage growth to rising automation to climate change –affect your potential for growth.
—Larry Fink, BlackRock, Annual Letter to CEOs, January 2018

Investors are increasingly turning to convenient, low-cost investment solutions such as index funds to help save for retirement and other important financial goals. This trend has fueled the growth of the asset management industry and led to questions around what impact, if any, asset managers should have on the companies they invest in. How do asset managers approach investment stewardship and to what degree do they factor in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations?

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